For my friends who have kids too, but especially for those who don't.

The family visited the old college campus yesterday to meet an old friend. While walking the grounds, Alex asked me if you had to take math as a student. I told her that it's probably different now, but when I was a student I took linguistics to get out of a math requirement, and it was a total farce that I regretted now.

"What's linguistics?" she asked. I explained that it's the study of language, but most of the tests were really just simple grammar exercises, and anyone who could recognize whether "I bringed my lunch" or "I brought my lunch" had a good chance of doing well in this class. This called to mind one day when the professor was discussing the "sph" phoneme, and how "sphere" was the only example in English.

I told Alex that I immediately thought of the word "sphincter" but didn't want to draw attention to myself.

Elizabeth has a friend in her kindergarten class whom I'll call Lola. Lola has two significant qualities. The first is that she loves Elizabeth, and the second is that she does not appear to have any inhibitions. Rachel acknowledges that Lola is a tricky friend to have, likely to lead her companions to places they might not otherwise go, but says (I'm paraphrasing) that every girl should have an ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners friend.

Yesterday Lola was over for an after-school playdate. The girls were in the basement, quiet, and Rachel was taking advantage of the time to get some quotidian chores done. It's difficult to vacuum a home with kids. Either they're running around everywhere, demanding your attention, or it's 9:30 pm and you're too damn tired to get started.

When Lola had to go home, the price of that quiet was discovered. Come with me now on a photographic safari of my basement. I had to help clean it up last night after dinner.

First, we head down the stairs.

This is an unholy marriage of baby toys, dress-up clothes, and Dora The Explorer toys, presided over by Thomas the Tank Engine.

The trail continues into the bathroom...

Okay, now Andrew's forgotten and discarded Rescue Heroes are joining the orgy.

On the bathroom floor, we are joined by stuffed animals. I'm noticing puddles closer to the toilet.

The sink is full of water, with all of Dora The Explorer's worldly goods packed on top. The paper towel roll is wet.

We asked Elizabeth if she knew that a line of civility was crossed, and she protested that she told Lola "No", but Lola didn't listen. So we should blame Lola, not her.

We wondered aloud if Lola even has a superego, and Elizabeth told us that Lola knew full well the scope of her destruction. "She said, wow, your mom's going to be mad!"

Next time Lola comes to visit - five minutes of quiet will trigger an alarm.

Andrew woke up at the crack of dawn, per usual. He made a conscious effort not to come in and tell us that he was awake, but he stomps when he walks, and he pees likes he's ringing a dinner bell.

It was the enthusiastic shutting of dresser drawers that woke up his sister. Elizabeth stumbled into our bedroom and climbed between us. Mindful of Rachel's request, I let Elizabeth tug on my hair. She likes to touch hair with her right hand while she sucks her left thumb. Her favorite hair is her brother's "because it's curly" but he can't stand it. This comes up a lot when they are sitting on the couch watching television or riding in the car.

(I probably mind it the least of all the family members when Elizabeth monkey-grooms my head, but for obvious reasons, my head is her fourth choice.)

Anyway, I was lying there, feeling the tugs, thinking that it was a easy sacrifice to make for my weary wife. I imagined her sleeping blissfully, unaware of the kid-tornado next to her, since I was silently absorbing all the motion.

It turned out, after later discussion and attempts to take credit, that Rachel thought the same thing was happening to me.

Rachel and I almost never argue, but we were in conflict over a recent episode.

Both Andrew and Alex had auditions for plays after the first day of school. The theater group meets at a church in our neighborhood. They both did a great job, and I was especially proud of Andrew, who was taking a more unfamiliar step than his big sister. Rachel overheard him and told me that he was the kid who sings in tune.

Alex's was asked to attend callbacks the next night. Rachel dropped her off with a book and went on to attend the back-to-school night at the preschool where she's teaching this year. I put the younger kids to bed early. Elizabeth, totally wiped from her exhausting kindergarten day, was asleep by quarter to eight.

At 8:15, Alex called me with her new "I'm in Middle School now" cell phone and told me that she was done. I told her I couldn't come get her, what with the sleeping babies, and that she should send her mother a text and let her know. Alex agreed and hung up. She has a very limited number of minutes on her phone and she husbands them carefully.

Five minutes later, she called again to say that she hadn't heard from Rachel, and that she was just going to walk home. I was surprised by this assertion, but recovered quickly. Is it raining? I asked her. Nope. Got your cell phone? Yup. Okay, see you soon.

A minute later, Rachel called to say that Alex had texted her. I said, yes, and she's walking home now.

This information was not received well.

We realized that we had a conflict in what Star Trek fans would call our prime directives. Rachel's is to keep the children alive. Mine is to help them grow up. They are not really in conflict, but have different tactics.

Rachel said that it was dark, cars were not expecting a little girl walking, and Alex was wearing dark clothing. And there's a part of the route without sidewalks.

I argued that Alex was canny enough to look out for cars, and the un-sidewalked segment of the route, along the school playground, was easy enough to walk along safely. And while I would not have suggested this idea to Alex, I was extremely proud of her for volunteering it, and was not going to discourage her.

Rachel conceded that Alex was unlikely to get squooshed this time, but it was still an unnecessary risk for the future. I conceded that Alex could be told not to walk home at night, but that I was not an irresponsible person for allowing her to do so this time.

Both Andrew and Alex got roles in their respective plays, so there's going to be a lot of pickups and dropoffs in the near future.

Earlier this year, while I was off at a baseball game, Alex told her mother that she wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Rachel assented, reminding Alex to be home for dinner.

Dinnertime came, but Alex wasn't back yet.

Rachel later described the feeling of having the quick-to-freak-out neighbors on one shoulder, whispering in her ear about abductions and hit-and-run car accidents. On the other shoulder sat her husband, perusing actuarial tables, rolling his eyes and citing risk management blogs. (For the record, the phenomenon of confusing what is possible with what is likely is known as the availability heuristic.) Rachel sweated a little bit but didn't panic, and of course Alex eventually came strolling in the house, feeling very guilty about having abused the trust placed in her.

She had walked about half a mile, crossed over Route 1 into Philadelphia, bought some water ice for her and her siblings and come home. She started to blubber a little bit as she confessed to Rachel.

Rachel gave Alex a short "disappointed" speech and left it alone. She did admit, grudgingly, that it was pretty cool all the same that Alex was able to make the trip on her own, even if it was irresponsible of her to cross that street and not tell anyone where she was going.

I was given orders later that night to keep any mission-confusing praise for my daughter to myself.

Last night, Alex and Myrtle were hanging out in between our houses. Myrtle's mom was trying to find them to let them know dinner was ready. She came over to ask if we'd seen them. Rachel thought they were outside, but Myrtle's mom hadn't seen them. Rachel looked upstairs and in the basement, but they were not in our house.

Myrtle's mom started to call out, "MYYYYRRTLE!" MYYYYRRRRTLE!" Her voice had a catch to it.

Rachel asked me over by the barbecue grill if I knew where the girls were. I said I had promised not to tell, but they'd gone to 69th street to hear Myrtle's boyfriend's band.

Rachel smiled and said, yeah, I figured you'd say that.

"Dude's got a mustache like THIS," I said, holding my hands out for emphasis.

It turns out the girls were up in Myrtle's bedroom where the AC rattled so loud they hadn't heard the call.

When Alex called to ask if she could sleep over, I told her what I'd said. She told Myrtle's dad, and he said the mustache is more of a handlebar style.

Andrew spent ten days with his grandparents in Illinois. While there he picked up an addiction to Wheel of Fortune. I watched it with him once, and I wasn't sure whether he was spelling out the words himself, or just delighting in the good fortune of those who win a thousand dollars of travel from Bedandbreakfast.com. WOF requires some cultural fluency. "White, Wheat or Rye Toast" for example, is not a phrase we ever use in our house. We only ever get egg and everything bagels.

Andrew being Andrew, he starts getting tense around five pm, lest he miss the 7:30 start time.He might benefit from a watch that beeps every night at 7:25 pm.

It was a long week on the home front. By Thursday, Rachel was looking like the Giving Tree towards the end of the book, when the boy's neediness is getting out of hand. We had tears streaming down cheeks or bedroom doors slamming every single evening.

There was one night when Andrew's "Mom....Mom.....Mommm" was echoing hauntingly from the bathroom upstairs. We were ignoring him, but we still winced every time we heard him. I finally went up to the door and implored him to just get out of the tub and get into pajamas so we could read books and get to bed.

"But I don't have pajamas here," he sighed.

"So go to your drawer and get some," I replied, struggling to keep my voice to a reasonable tone. It had been a difficult dinner, with lots of cross-child sniping.

"But I'll be wet."

"So grab a towel!"

[pause] "...I need you to bring me a towel."

As I reported this to Rachel, she wondered if perhaps she had made a mistake long ago, being too available to her children, sabotaging their ability to help themselves.

This morning, though, everyone was authentically jolly. There was a pivotal moment when Andrew and Elizabeth were sitting at the breakfast table. Andrew had walled himself off with cereal boxes and his sister asked if she could have one. I braced myself for the shouting, but Andrew said, "Sure" and handed her the biggest one. "Thanks!" she chirped in response. And I let out a sigh of relief.

It's a real shock sometimes leaving the workplace and coming into a house that has been roiling since breakfast time, when someone warmed her cold hands in an unhygenic way causing great distress to one of her siblings.

See if you can guess which things I say at work and which things I say at home.

That website won't load because the name server is down. It's outside our control, but I bet it will be back up soon.

Has anyone fed the cat? Because she's going nuts.

Please, oh PLEASE, shut the door while you're pooping.

Did it keep happening after you rebooted?

Excuse me, you left a wet towel on the floor.

I'm restoring those files Annette asked for.

We should put Emily's present away so it still looks nice by her birthday party.

Can you maybe move into a different room if she's bothering you so much?